The “Vital Statistics” sidebar (statbox) is a dynamic component that displays metadata about software components or people. It appears on the right side of wiki pages when relevant fields are provided in the page’s YAML front matter.
Overview
The statbox operates in two modes:
- Manual mode: You specify metadata fields manually in the page front matter
- Automatic mode: The statbox scrapes information from Maven repositories using JavaScript
The two modes can be combined: the automatic population only fills empty fields, which allows manual overrides as needed.
Basic Usage
To enable the statbox, add at least one supported field to your page’s YAML front matter:
---
title: My Component
name: My Component Name
icon: /media/icons/my-component.png
source-url: https://github.com/myorg/my-component
---
Supported Fields
General Fields
| Field | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
icon |
URL of the image icon to show in the statbox header | /media/icons/fiji.png |
name |
Name of the component or person | "Fiji" |
affiliation |
Organizational affiliation | "Fiji University" |
website |
Primary website link | https://fiji.sc/ |
Component-Specific Fields
| Field | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
artifact |
Maven groupId:artifactId for automatic population | sc.fiji:fiji |
repository |
Maven repository URL (defaults to maven.scijava.org) | https://repo1.maven.org/maven2 |
pom-url |
Direct URL to a POM file for automatic population | https://raw.githubusercontent.com/imagej/imagej2/main/pom.xml |
source-url |
Source code repository URL | https://github.com/imagej/imagej2 |
source-label |
Custom label for source link (auto-detected if not provided) | "on GitHub" |
license-url |
License details URL | /licensing/bsd |
license-label |
License name/label | "BSD-2" |
release-url |
Latest release URL | https://github.com/fiji/fiji/releases/latest |
release-version |
Latest release version | "2.14.0" |
release-date |
Latest release date | "2023-07-07" |
dev-status |
Development status | "Active", "Stable", "Unstable", "Obsolete" |
support-status |
Support level | "Active", "Partial", "Minimal", "None" |
forum-tag |
Image.sc forum tag | "fiji" |
Team Fields
Team fields support multiple people in various formats:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
team-founders |
Project creators |
team-leads |
Decision makers |
team-developers |
Feature developers |
team-debuggers |
Bug fixers |
team-maintainers |
Release managers |
team-reviewers |
Code reviewers |
team-support |
Community support |
team-contributors |
Code contributors |
Person-Specific Fields
| Field | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
gravatar |
Gravatar hash for profile image | "abc123def456..." |
forum |
Image.sc Forum username | "username" |
github |
GitHub username | "username" |
stackoverflow |
Stack Overflow user ID | "12345" |
openhub |
Open Hub username | "username" |
twitter |
Twitter username | "username" |
linkedin |
LinkedIn profile path | "in/username" |
researchgate |
ResearchGate profile | "Username_Name" |
loop |
Loop Research Network ID | "12345" |
orcid |
ORCID identifier | "0000-0000-0000-0000" |
researcherid |
ResearcherID | "A-1234-2023" |
scopus |
Scopus Author ID | "12345678900" |
arxiv |
arXiv author identifier | "smith_j_1" |
scholar |
Google Scholar ID | "AbCdEfGhIjK" |
honorific |
Special community title | "Grand Poobah" |
Advanced Features
Automatic Population
The most powerful feature is automatic metadata population from Maven artifacts:
---
title: Fiji
artifact: sc.fiji:fiji
---
This will automatically populate:
- Component name
- Source repository link
- License information
- Latest release version and URL
- Release date
- Team information from POM
- Development and support status
Multi-part URL Statistics
Several fields have URL/label pairs for better control over display text:
---
release-url: https://github.com/imagej/imagej/releases/tag/v2.14.0
release-version: "2.14.0"
license-url: /licensing/bsd
license-label: "BSD-2"
---
Source URL Auto-detection
The source-url field automatically generates appropriate labels based on the domain:
github.com→ “on GitHub”gitlab.com→ “on GitLab”bitbucket.org→ “on BitBucket”sourceforge.net→ “on SourceForge”- Other URLs → “online”
Team Member Formats
Team fields accept comma-separated lists with three supported formats:
- Wiki people reference:
@ctrueden(looks up/people/ctrueden) - Name with custom link:
John Doe | https://johndoe.com - Plain name:
Jane Smith
Example:
team-leads: '@ctrueden, Curtis Rueden | /people/curtis-rueden'
team-developers: '@ctrueden, @hinerm, Jane Smith'
Affiliation Links
The affiliation field supports the Name | URL format:
affiliation:
- 'University of Wisconsin-Madison | https://wisc.edu'
- 'Morgridge Institute for Research | https://morgridge.org'
Examples
Manual Component Example
---
title: Fiji
name: Fiji
icon: /media/icons/fiji.png
website: https://fiji.sc
source-url: https://github.com/fiji/fiji
license-url: /licensing/gpl
license-label: GPLv3
release-version: "2.14.0"
release-date: "2023-06-01"
dev-status: Active
support-status: Active
team-leads: '@ctrueden'
team-developers: '@ctrueden, @hinerm'
forum-tag: fiji
---
Automatic Component Example
---
title: ImgLib2
artifact: net.imglib2:imglib2
---
Person Example
---
title: Curtis Rueden
name: Curtis Rueden
gravatar: abc123def456
affiliation: 'University of Wisconsin-Madison | https://wisc.edu'
website: https://ctrue.name
github: ctrueden
forum: ctrueden
orcid: 0000-0001-7055-6707
scholar: VqJdqBEAAAAJ
honorific: Fiji Maintainer
---
Implementation Details
The statbox is implemented in _includes/layout/statbox using Liquid templating and enhanced with JavaScript from assets/js/maven.js for automatic population features. When artifact or pom-url is specified, the JavaScript automatically fetches and parses Maven metadata to populate empty fields.
The automatic metadata population logic works best for components using Maven as their project management/build tool, and which extend the pom-scijava parent for build configuration and dependency version management, because pom-scijava enforces the presence of all the needed metadata. See here for an example of how populated metadata might look in your project’s pom.xml file.
The refresh button (⟲) allows users to reload the automatic data, useful when new releases are available.
